


Ma Soeur

by Halja



Category: Holy Fools - Joanne Harris
Genre: Angst, Bitterness, F/F, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Jealousy, Loss of Faith, Nuns, One-Sided Attraction, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29115915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halja/pseuds/Halja
Summary: Germaine, Clémente, and two words - more significant than you might think.
Relationships: Clémente/Germaine (Holy Fools), Clémente/Juliette | Soeur Auguste
Collections: Banned Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Ma Soeur

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Ma Soeur](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8527522) by [Halja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halja/pseuds/Halja). 



> A translation of an old-ish work, edited and repurposed for the Banned Together Bingo. Prompt: Fuck The Church/Fuck Religious Authorities. A fic based on a novel about a remote, relatively isolated convent full of heretical, queer, or otherwise sinful nuns just fit so well, didn't it? And I didn't even bring up the main character's alternative theology...

« _Ma Soeur…_ »

The words almost _glimmer_ in the cool darkness inside her cell, crackling like sparks of fire as they annihilate the silence, burning it away as if it was just rough cloth like that of their gowns. Germaine _feels_ the silvery laughter that follows before she even hears it.

On the lips of any other nun, those few syllables would sound dull and colorless – perhaps out there, on dry land, someone even _believes_ in them – yet on Clémente’s blood-red mouth, they are an insult, a joke, a guffaw that’s been held back and turned into something fine and graceful before being finally released. Some cruel prank on her, on the Reverend Mother, on the world as a whole. Like her discarded wimple, left scattered in the fields so that Clémente’s long, golden hair may trap the sun’s warm rays like a net and darken them. Like the impudent look in Clémente’s sea-colored eyes and the blasphemies she whispers in Germaine’s ear during their prayers, breath hot and sweet as sin over her skin.

Germaine doesn’t know whom Clémente’s careless ruthlessness is really meant for. Sometimes, when she’s aflame with an old miser’s selfishness and a child’s naivety, she thinks it must be all for her, only for her. But deep down inside, there where the fifteen slashes cut through flesh and bone and infected her, she knows that nothing in that woman belongs to her. She’s seen the way Clémente looks at Auguste, the curiosity and the hunger in her gaze when she watches her work in the salt marshes, Auguste’s skin browned by summer and her hair as red and wild as tongues of fire out of a passage from the Holy Scriptures.

Maybe her _sister’s_ harmless, childish spitefulness, so like that of a little girl who gets bored all too often and all too easily, belongs to that woman as well, the one who – as everyone knows, except perhaps Clémente herself – will never be her lover. Or maybe it’s meant for the convent and for all of them, the little beasties forced inside their burrow by their own fear. Maybe it’s all for that God they’re supposed to love, the same God that’s supposed to love _them._

Or maybe, Clémente, too, once found herself with a blade slashing through her flesh, although her skin is smooth and unmarked and perfect and Germaine knows it better than anyone else. Perhaps Clémente, too, found herself hating everything and everyone, at the end of it all.

« _Ma Sour…_ » Clémente mewls again in the dark, voice still heavy with sleep yet somehow already deliberately mocking and sensuous. Murky, like those cruel thoughts she never shares with Germaine but Germaine always manages to guess at, or the too-blue, too-deep pools of her eyes.

On a whim, Germaine caresses her lover’s face with her cold hand, trying to make her touch as soft as a sigh on Clémente’s warm skin. Slow and relentless, her fingers trace those shapes the darkness keeps hidden from her. _Ma Soeur._ Whose sister could she ever be, her Clémente? The Devil’s, if he even exists; now, _that’s_ the most likely hypothesis. But according to many – the silvery glint of the blade and the stench of wine on his breath swarm her mind on that thought, leaving her breathless – _Germaine_ is the Devil’s sister, too.

Her companion does nothing to help her chase these bitter thoughts away, but then again, she never does. But Germaine can almost fool herself into thinking she’s making an attempt, when Clémente answers her touch by brushing her fingertips so very softly over the fifteen scars marring her face, can almost believe her capable of some emotion more complex than lust and boredom as she whispers sweet obscenities in her ear.

She can almost – _almost_ – be sure she loves Clémente when she finally moves to light a candle so she can see her face. When she sees her own colorless eyes, mirrored in Clémente’s blue ones, come alive with a long-forgotten light, a spark that was ignited only once by a long-lost girl in a night of full of sex and blood.

Almost, but that’s enough for her now.


End file.
